Melissa A. Schilling
I have taught innovation strategy for many years, and in 2010 when Steve Jobs was looking frail, some of my students started asking "What's going to happen to Apple if it loses Steve Jobs?" I was really surprised that I didn't have a good answer to this question. How much of Apple's innovation came from Steve himself, and how much was really in the DNA of the firm? Where did Steve's "magic" come from? Could we learn it? Could it be passed to a successor?
I had a sabbatical coming up so I spent a year just studying Steve Jobs! I already knew a lot about Apple but now I wanted to understand Steve Jobs as a person. What was he like as a child? What were his parents like? What did he believe? What were his goals? What were his formative experiences? Etc.
Soon I noticed something surprising. Steve Jobs had a lot of unusual commonalities with another innovator I had already written a case about -- Dean Kamen. Both men had dropped out of college, both were driven by idealistic goals, both tended to reject society's rules, both wore the same clothes everyday and had unusual homes, etc. It intrigued me. Could these commonalities have anything to do with their innovativeness?
I decided to create a multiple case study research project (the biggest part of my job as a professor is research) studying serial breakthrough innovators. I created a protocol that would select a set of serial breakthrough innovators while minimizing my input into the process (that helps to reduce researcher bias), and I spent six years writing cases about the innovators, studying each commonality and difference, and comparing what I found with the existing research on innovation and creativity.
It ended up being the most rewarding project of my career. I learned so much about innovators, creativity, and tenacity. It also changed how I think about myself, and how I parent my children. I hope it's inspiring for you too!
I had a sabbatical coming up so I spent a year just studying Steve Jobs! I already knew a lot about Apple but now I wanted to understand Steve Jobs as a person. What was he like as a child? What were his parents like? What did he believe? What were his goals? What were his formative experiences? Etc.
Soon I noticed something surprising. Steve Jobs had a lot of unusual commonalities with another innovator I had already written a case about -- Dean Kamen. Both men had dropped out of college, both were driven by idealistic goals, both tended to reject society's rules, both wore the same clothes everyday and had unusual homes, etc. It intrigued me. Could these commonalities have anything to do with their innovativeness?
I decided to create a multiple case study research project (the biggest part of my job as a professor is research) studying serial breakthrough innovators. I created a protocol that would select a set of serial breakthrough innovators while minimizing my input into the process (that helps to reduce researcher bias), and I spent six years writing cases about the innovators, studying each commonality and difference, and comparing what I found with the existing research on innovation and creativity.
It ended up being the most rewarding project of my career. I learned so much about innovators, creativity, and tenacity. It also changed how I think about myself, and how I parent my children. I hope it's inspiring for you too!
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